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Mourning Becomes the Mad Men: Notes on Nostalgia
   Modern nostalgia is a mourning for the impossibility of mythical
   nostalgia for an absolute, a home that is both physical and spiritual,
   nostalgia for the 1960s and Draper’s inexplicably charming misogyny:
   a stark divergence in Mad Men’s particular brand of nostalgia; it
   So, too, the show’s sense of nostalgia evinces a continual tension
   both cases, the pleasures of Mad Men’snostalgia are such that the show
   Men articulates not only viewers’ potential nostalgia (for being part
   cultivate in its viewers speak to the heart of nostalgia’s etymology:
   considered a disease, nostalgia was first diagnosed by Johannes Hofer
   nostalgia has shifted from medical conundrum to socially-accepted
   sentimentality. As Svetlana Boym elaborates, “Nostalgia (from
   no longer exists or has never existed. Nostalgia is a sentiment of loss
   A cinematic image of nostalgia is a double exposure, or a
   dream and everyday life.”^4 This description of nostalgia as a double
   This pleasure, often found in nostalgic daydreams, separates nostalgia
   from its cousin, mourning. Together, mourning and nostalgia often merge
   idea: a fantasy never to be realized, a dream unmoored), nostalgia
   Sometimes dwelling in nostalgia can be better than the actual lived
   Nostalgia—it’s delicate, but potent. Teddy told me that in Greek,
   “nostalgia” literally means “the pain from an old wound.” It’s a twinge
   What does it mean that Don mistranslates nostalgia as a sort of
   implicit to contemporary (and commercial) uses of nostalgia are not
   are loved.” Don’s supposed literal translation aligns nostalgia more
   scene, Don’s nostalgia, on such stark display during the Kodak pitch,
   loss and nostalgia are powerful tools of the advertising trade, lending
   What of the viewer’s nostalgia, then? Does Mad Men’s success and the
   Embodied by Peggy, the first frames the viewer’s potential nostalgia as
   is ours, but while nostalgia may lead Don astray, his loss is our gain.
   Mad Men offers us nostalgia as a lure. The show basks in the past,
    1. The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 8. ↩
    3. “Medical Dissertation on Nostalgia” (1688), translated by Carolyn
    4. The Future of Nostalgia, xiii-xiv. ↩
    7. Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, 8. ↩
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